Actor Steve Coogan and presenter Carol Vorderman have backed Liberal Democrat pledges to reform how the UK’s general elections are run.
The Coalition agreed on a referendum on AV as a compromise. The Lib Dems’ (and most electoral reform campaigners’) preferred voting system is Single Transferrable Vote, which is effectively AV but with multi-member constituencies instead of single-member. STV is used in the Republic of Ireland and delivers proportional results whilst maintaining the existence of geographic constituency links - generally considered two desirable features of a voting system (along with preferentialism, a feature AV and STV both have).
If we could have made the switch to AV then it would have been only a short step from there to STV a few years later. But the Tories campaigned heavily against it, and Labour were highly divided on electoral reform so were officially neutral but in practice a majority of Labour MPs backed the ‘no’ campaign. So the referendum failed.
@theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne I support PR, but I am concerned about keeping a constituncy link so everybody has a named MP. A modified form of STV would seem to be the way, with ATV for by-elections.
Having larger constituencies of five mps keeps the link and also makes the mps compete with each other to provide support. The current system can lead to people who need help due to bad laws being forced to go to their MP, the minister who introduced it and is responsible for that law. They won’t get help it’ll be too embarrassing.
Also I see elsewhere someone complaining of lists of MPs. We already have that in safe seats! They just put one name of the list in each constituency. Have five MPs in each area is an inporvement.
@PamCrossland @theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne
It can’t be proportional and the existing level of constitutional representation without going to over 2000 MPs. PR in a Parliamentary system wrecks one person one vote for one candidate in a constituency.
Be careful what you wish for.
STV has one person one vote, in a constituency, with the added benefit of allowing voters to express their vote in a preferential ranking and delivering a proportional outcome. That is what I wish for.
Randomised voting.
Keep the constituencies exactly as they are, and each election everyone votes the way they do now.
Then instead of counting the votes, we shuffle them and pick a random vote and do what it says.
In aggregate this is proportional across the country, and also means every voter remains important in the constituency, you never know if the person you piss off today might personally vote you out tomorrow.
It also eliminates career politicians. Even in a safe seat you probably won’t win three terms.
It’ll never get used anywhere but it’s fun to think about.
@simon_lucy @theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne This is why I said a modified form. For example, from the top of my head, either first place candidate gets first choice of sub-constituency, 2nd, gets second choice, etc. Or the winner gets a sub-constituency in the area where most voted for them, 2nd, is their first of the first seond best, etc.
It could be done if people would only put their heads together.
@theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne
Exactly, which is why I voted for it in 2011. It deserved to succeed, but the degree of apathy was high. People didn’t bother to get off their backsides to vote, and it was lost. A great pity in many ways. It was a Lib-Dem red line for joining the coalition, together with the raising of the income tax threshold. The Tories now pretend that was their idea. It wasn’t.
AV+ was not a PR method and only offered minor benefits above FPTP. It would still lead to a concentration of power between the two main parties, but it would increase the overall number of seats gained by a centrist party.
AV+ suited the Tories (and Labour) only slightly less well than FPTP, but Lib Dems would have been a much bigger spare leg if it had gone through. For the Tories, it was a win-win result.
In other words, the LDs allowed themselves to make another compromise, being tempted with another minor power grab, and in doing so allowed themselves to be outplayed again, and didn’t even gain us the minor democratic benefits AV+ had to offer.
As for AV+ being a short leap to PR, I have doubts, even though I voted in favour of it. PR would be less beneficial than AV+ to the three main parties now, so why would the LDs try to push it through? Also the referendum would have been used as a weapon - “the people voted so we can’t change it” - just as has been done for election reform, the Scottish Referendum and Brexit since.
@theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne
Neither are proportional. If STV was used as multimember then constituencies would have around quarter of a million voters instead of 90k and parties would get list candidates, either regional, national or UK wide and they wouldn’t be elected by anyone.
Things not talked about by PR promoters.
The Republic of Ireland has 39 multi-member constituencies electing 160 members in total (so an average of four per constituency). That achieves almost perfectly proportional results. They have no party lists - each party nominates multiple candidates and you can (for example) choose to rank the individual candidates in whatever order you prefer.
If you translate this into UK terms, it would be the equivalent of merging four neighbouring constituencies into one and then having that elect four MPs. There might be a handful of unusual cases where you choose to take a different approach for reasons of geographic common sense (for example, Orkney and Shetlands or the Isle of Wight would probably remain as they are) but for most parts of the country that hardly seems particularly egregious.
@theinspectorst @i_am_not_a_robot @Syldon @jonne
You can’t translate it into UK terms, there’s around 4M voters in Ireland, 41M in the UK across 4 countries with greater disparity in density of populations and geographical size.
The average size of constituencies is 73k, so you agree with me that the future size would be around 250k. How is that local representation to a National Parliament?
There would have to be party lists to fudge it into a general proportional result across the Union.
